Map of Constantinople, 1453 & Finding the house of Loukas Notaras

To orientate readers of Porphyry & Ash, I took the Cristoforo Buondelmonti map of Constantinople from 1420 & rejigged the key bits onto a more accurate land shape. As you can probably tell, this was a first foray into photoshop.

(Click to enlarge)

And here is the original by the Florentine cartographer Cristoforo Buondelmonti

Buondelmonti was an Italian Franciscan priest and traveler who left Tuscany in 1414 and traveled across Greece. His map is the oldest surviving of Constantinople, and the only one which antedates the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453. They were much copied (the one above is actually one of the copies, made in 1491).

In another of the Buondelmonti sketches there is a building which is clearly not a church, with a wonderful belvedere tower on one side and the notation "palatium chir Luca". Is this the house of Loukas Notaras? It fits the rough location of where it should be found.

It also fits the rough location of Eirene Kulesi, the Tower of Eirene - a name given to it by a 16th century traveler. It formed a corner of the Valide Han in the Ottoman era but its Byzantine origin is unconfirmed. Might it have been part of the Notaras family residence?